DOE'S Dubious Reasoning

The Bloomberg administration's decision to force out the Principal of the city's first Arabic school last summer has taken a new turn with the revelation that the comments that got her bounced were misrepresented by the New York Post.

During the legal arguments over an injunction sought by the ousted Principal, Debbie Almontaser, city attorneys agreed with her lawyers that a Post reporter erroneously quoted her saying that a group of young women who created an "Intifada NYC" t-shirt did so as a symbol of "shaking off oppression." Ms. Almontaser had offered that phrase as the definition of intifada, but the conflation of the phrase with her remarks about the group made it seem as if she was endorsing the word in its most-common application: the uprising of Palestinians against Israel.

If she had been quoted accurately, Ms. Almontaser's discussion of the t-shirt would have still prompted questions about why she hadn't pointed out that the group, Arab Women Active in the Arts and Media, was indulging in the sometimes-dangerous habit young people have of making consciously provocative statements without considering the import of the message they are sending.

But the goof - if that's what it was - by a Post reporter became the fuel for a campaign led by the paper's editorial board to have Ms. Almontaser removed as Principal of the school she was about to open, the Khalil Gibran International Academy.

Compounding the peculiarity of what transpired was the fact that a Department of Education public affairs staffer sat in on the phone interview and told Ms. Almontaser afterward that she thought it went well. So why, then, when a doctored quote set off the furor, was DOE so passive about demanding that the Post print a retraction while being so aggressive in serving up Ms. Almontaser as a sacrifice to the building media frenzy?

It is the sort of skewed equation that wouldn't pass muster in Chancellor Joel Klein's school system. Then again, if you believe government should be run like a business, there is a logic to abandoning any sense of principles because the cost will be cheaper than standing your ground.

That's not much of a message to impart to your students, however. Ms. Almontaser did the interview, despite her concerns about the paper's motivation, on the orders of DOE Press Secretary David Cantor, then was removed because of the newspaper's distortion of what she actually said. So why was she the only party held accountable?

That thought was foremost in the mind of Federal Court of Appeals Judge Jon Newman, who during oral arguments on Ms. Almontaser's bid for an injunction against naming a permanent appointee to head the Gibran school - which was ultimately denied - said, "So, if a city employee speaks to the press, they're at risk that the press garbles their remarks, and then they get fired? That's quite a position for the City of New York."

DOE officials are known for Googling reporters, presumably to gain insight into their backgrounds and their leanings. They might do well to take time out from that endeavor to Google the Spanish-American War, which got helped along by a publisher not unlike the man who runs the Post creating facts to make the case for the conflict.

When they're done, they can Google the word timidity, and see whether any names they recognize pop up.